Instead, we sat on the couch. Nervous energy ricocheted throughout me. Now what? Surely we weren’tactuallygoing to go to bed.
Here was the thing. I totally, absolutely, one hundred percent wanted to hook up with Noah Barbanel. I wanted to so badly it hurt. My longing for him twisted up my insides and shortened my breaths and made my very lungs ache.
And yet. The transitional period, going from not making outtomaking out, seemed so utterly terrifying, so fraught with potential rejection, I thought I might rather jump off a bridge than face it.
Niko said this state of not-kissing got better with practice. She said eventually, you became such an expert you could sense the way kisses fell like commas in sentences; the silence before them, the expectation in the air.
I hadn’t reached that point.
Noah shifted on the couch. “Do you want to watch something?”
No. I did not want to watch something. I wanted to make out with him.
“Sure,” I said, because god forbid I communicate like an adult.
He switched on the TV and we found the first episode of a show we’d both been talking about trying, and turned it on.
Okay. Fine. I would sit here, watching TV like there was anypossibleway I could concentrate on it, when all I wanted to do was jump his bones. We sat shoulder to shoulder, but without actually touching, and not touching made me want to throw up. I was as aware of the spare inch between us as I’d ever been ofanythingin my life.
The show ended.
“Do you want to watch another one?”
Obviously I didn’t want to watch another, which I communicated by shrugging. Great. I needed to say something. To make a move. But I couldn’t manage to part my lips, to make anything come out of them.
Say something say something say something.
“No,” I blurted.
“No?” He raised his brows.
“I don’t want to watch another show.”
He shifted again, but this time toward me on the couch so we faced each other. “Really,” he said. “Any other suggestions, then?”
My head felt so light I thought I might pass out. My breaths camequick and shallow, and the nerves in my stomach hadn’t disappeared. All I could manage was the smallest nod.
“Like what?” He lifted a hand and toyed with a strand of my hair.
“Um.” I swallowed. Could he hear my heart? I couldn’t hear anything over the roar of blood in my ears.
He wound my hair tight around one finger, then released it, brushing the strand back in a long, lingering motion, palm sweeping against the side of my head. I shivered. His hand slid over my neck and jaw to cup the back of them. His eyes never left mine. “No suggestions?”
My heart was about to burst from my chest. My words came out as the barest whisper. “Kiss me.”
A slow, radiant smile covered his face. “Kiss what?” He brushed his lips, light as a feather, across my cheekbone. “Kiss this?”
I managed a tiny, wordless nod.
He pressed his mouth to a soft spot beneath my ear. “Kiss this?”
Heat rocked through me. I hadn’t known that spotexisted. My head fell back. “Oh, god, Noah.”
I could hear the smile in his voice. “Kiss this?” He pulled the lower lobe of my ear into his mouth and I gasped, hands reaching for him as sensation washed through me. Ears. Why had no one ever told me how great ears were?
My hands found his head and I pulled him toward me, twisting so our lips finally met. My whole body seized. It was like I had both expected it and had no idea at all the kiss was coming, like I’d been preparing my whole life and was stunned senseless.
His mouth was firm and warm and I couldn’t get enough of it, I couldn’t get close enough to him. We pressed against each other, hot and insistent and together. His tongue slid into my mouth, twining around mine until I gasped. All my bones seemed to loosen, mymuscles coming undone. Fire rolled over me, hot and slick and dangerous, and I would have been quivering if I hadn’t been pressed against Noah so closely.
